Women Who Thrive, Change The World!

6 years ago today I posted this and Facebook reminded me of it. The video below is worth watching on a regular basis when you forget who you are in your absolute glorious, brilliant, astounding, courageous and sacred being. When you doubt who you are and forget what you are here to be and do. I needed this reminder today…..and every day. How about you?

POST FROM 12/14/2011

Today I watched a video of a talk given by the Dali Lama on women. What he said in essence is that there is a “lack of human affection” in our world today….and that women are the ones to turn that around. Our naturally compassionate and feeling nature often lead the way in daily interactions.

This is not to say that men don’t have this as well, but we as women are designed for it. After a few funny stories the Dali Lama made a statement that would potentially upset 1,000’s of years of a lineage that is based on very defined practices and beliefs. He said he was open to a female Dali Lama! Needless to say this would be quite a paradigm shift for many, many people…but what if this did happen??

Following on the heels of this I was re-inspired once again by Caroline Casey who gave a TED talk on how extraordinarily far belief can take a person. I won’t spoil the story for you, so you will have to devote 15 minutes to it in order to find out what happens. You won’t be sorry that you did!

I am asking myself right now, “am I pretending to be something that I am not?” or “am I absolutely being truly myself”? Good question to immerse in! Enjoy the video and Caroline’s story…she is one of those innately compassionate (self and other) women and just by being fully herself inspires us all!

Moist with sweat and a smile of complete joy radiating on so many faces I joined the ecstatic dance community this morning in Nevada City, California to celebrate the deep feminine rising.

Yesterday saw 1,000’s of women (and men) marching through the streets of their cities and towns across the globe. The posts on Facebook revealed the empowerment within women’s expression on behalf of equality, dignity, justice, compassion and love.

The connection and energy that was generated swept the planet.

Even I, who was in deep meditation and prayer – holding the space for those that were marching – felt the rising and embodiment of something that has been pulsing under the surface for awhile now.

We must take a look at the unfolding here. Would this have happened in just such a way if the catalyst of Donald Trump being elected President of the U.S. was not present?

Perhaps. Yet trusting the unfolding versus living in fear is something to consider.

The journey we are all on right now, at this pivotal turning point in our human and planetary history, is meant to bring the dark into the light to be seen more clearly, to face the challenges head on, and for effective collaborative action to be taken.

The bubbles that some of us have been hidden in are broken wide open…. and there is nowhere to hide. We are not alone.

We are moving beyond our own limited self interest to embody the deep interconnection that holds all 7 billion humans on this planet. To take action in sisterhood and brotherhood. To become deeply rooted and collaborative with the natural world – the Earth – that sustains our very being.

What happens next? Continuing to wake up and connect. And within that waking up finding the dance steps that match our soul’s purpose here. Joining others that would welcome us in as the missing piece that they have been looking for.

Any rigidity that we hold must soften. For hidden in the rigid, frozen, unsustainable and repetitive breath holding patterns that so often hold us in their grip is a new way of being.

A way of being that like ecstatic dance releases our fullest expression and potential – our joy in connection, collaboration and solidarity. A fertile landscape for the change that is being called for.

There can be no sustainable strength for the many tasks before us if there is tension and fear keeping us prisoner. There is literally no breath – no life – in those spaces.

Yearning for freedom to dance as if no one was watching…. and as if everyone is watching.

These next steps we take as women, and with the men that join us, must come from the fullest breath possible. Acknowledging the challenges before us and being willing to fall on our faces if must be. No longer quiet.

Expressing with powerful dignity…. and vast compassion and love that holds each being we touch as ourselves.

NATURAL PASSAGES CONSULTING

SERVICES OFFERED:

Coaching and Editing for Transformative and Visionary Writers

I help you reveal new possibilities in your creative work

Language is fundamental to who we are as biological beings and is the primary vehicle for taking action that produces effective results. It inherently carries within it our identity in the world and the potential for connection and collaboration.

As an advanced practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu I am able to see and work with the connection between the body’s energy system and that of language. Conversations actually live in our bodies. Words hold energy that stimulate our biology in various ways.

When did we as women in this lifetime forget who we are….and who we are not. Granted older age allows space and time for reflection however, something that is so important it escapes our everyday consciousness brought itself to me today.

We are life givers, hand maidens to the Divine, passionate sexual beings, love incarnate, and grounded indigenous Earth stewards. It is not what we do, but who we are in any given moment.

Life seems to stream from us as if there is no tomorrow and yesterday has been lost for all time. The 86,400 seconds we are blessed with each day are ours to squander, to get things done….or to drop into in such a way that “time” seems to stand still. Our attention drops into the stillness and motion of creation. Into our bodies, our breath, our hearts…..sourced from Soul.

The agendas, “to do” lists, committees for this and that, obligations, demands from others, and endless expectations of our own keep us enslaved by their very nature. Not to say that right livelihood and courageous work in the world is not important.

More importantly it is the moment where we realize that this is it. That we have no other moment except this one to deeply honor, appreciate and bow down to the sensations, thoughts, feelings, sounds, and beauty that inhabits even the darkest and most challenging experiences.

This is now. This is our life. Our pleasure. Our pain. Nothing about these moments demands that we prove we are enough, up to it, beautiful, competent, strong, courageous, have it together, or even know what the heck we are doing.

This is life by the way. An experiment in living in the moments that are given to us. And we never know when they will be taken away…..forever.

How many seconds of this lifetime will you allow to simply pass on through without noticing the moss on the rock by the creek and how soft and green it is, the sound of water flowing through your body rocking you from within, the softness of an extra layer of pine needles that has gifted you with a spongy path to walk upon after the rains, the majesty of trees married together forever for as long as you touch them with love, the smells of rich earth rising into your nostrils to ground you into the very roots of your being….

NATURAL PASSAGES CONSULTING

SERVICES OFFERED:

Coaching and Editing for Transformative and Visionary Writers

I help you reveal new possibilities in your creative work

Language is fundamental to who we are as biological beings and is the primary vehicle for taking action that produces effective results. It inherently carries within it our identity in the world and the potential for connection and collaboration.

As an advanced practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu I am able to see and work with the connection between the body’s energy system and that of language. Conversations actually live in our bodies. Words hold energy that stimulate our biology in various ways.

Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.Unfold your own myth.Rumi

Shape shifting. What shamans propose is possible when working with the “unseen” and “unknown” within the mystery that pervades all of creation. Yet this is available to each of us. At this current time in our history it is urgent to “shape shift” into a new reality, an ancient knowing of who we are….really.

Stripping away the words and the traumas that have contained our identity up to this very moment in time, harvested from cultural, family and ancestral dictates, standards and proclamations.

Wiping the slate clean with the movement of our bodies – a blank canvas before us where we can color in and out of the lines, curves, spirals and intimate spaces of our soul’s journey.

Never a “finished” product, but an on going transformative improvisational art piece that is constantly evolving out of the true genius we came in with. Bringing forth the essence -innate gifts, expressions, talents – of what we were born with and beyond.

Co-creating in collaboration with the life blood of the natural world, the mysteries of the cosmos and the whispers of Source into the depths of our heart and the strands of our cells – releasing the Soul to sing a song that no one else can replicate, yet everyone can hear.

“This is the ultimate act of creation, to speak (with our words, bodies and intention) our selves into a new story for the future of life on earth.”

-Michael Stone

Creating by accessing the wisdom of Spirit and the expression of Soul that is within our very cells. Extending our roots deeper into the Earth and listening with them to the pulsation of all life inherent in our own unique path to wholeness.

Uncoupling the sensations of past injury and emotional trauma from the thoughts and conversations that arise out of them. Taking the old “stories” by their tails and flinging them out into another realm that can contain them without harm to our being or that of other life.

Brother David Steindl-Rast speaks to “The Double Realm” (a phrase he credited to German poet Rainer Maria Rilke). He talked about The Double Realm as a realm in which eternity and linear time coexist. All of us are simultaneously inhabiting these two worlds – the part of awareness that is in tune with eternity and the part that is walking the path of current life flow.

Even more – a reason to “color out of the lines” and consider that the great eternal unfolding of life that brings us sorrows and pain, as well as joys and freedom to express ,is asking us to trust – implicitly. And though we have a unique soul-print to open and explore in our life, it can only be accessed within the interconnected relationship to all life.

Every moment informs the next – communicating on such a vast scale that the subtleties are lost on us until we wake up one day and surrender. Surrender to the unfolding. Surrender the myth of separation. Surrender the pain and the joy. Simply surrender.

Only then comes the freedom to unfold our own myth…….

We Have Come to Be Danced

We have come to be dancednot the pretty dancenot the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dancebut the claw our way back into the bellyof the sacred, sensual animal dancethe unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dancethe holding the precious moment in the palmsof our hands and feet dance

We have come to be dancednot the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dancebut the wring the sadness from our skin dancethe blow the chip off our shoulder dancethe slap the apology from our posture dance

We have come to be dancednot the monkey see, monkey do danceone, two dance like youone two three, dance like me dancebut the grave robber, tomb stalkertearing scabs & scars open dancethe rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance

We have come to be dancednot the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dancebut the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dancethe shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dancethe mother may I?yes you may take 10 giant leaps dancethe Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dancethe everyone can come to our heaven dance

We have come to be dancedwhere the kingdom’s collidein the cathedral of fleshto burn back into the lightto unravel, to play, to fly, to prayto root in skin sanctuaryWe have come to be dancedWE HAVE COME

NATURAL PASSAGES CONSULTING

SERVICES OFFERED:

Coaching and Editing for Transformative and Visionary Writers

I help you reveal new possibilities in your creative work

Language is fundamental to who we are as biological beings and is the primary vehicle for taking action that produces effective results. It inherently carries within it our identity in the world and the potential for connection and collaboration.

As an advanced practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu I am able to see and work with the connection between the body’s energy system and that of language. Conversations actually live in our bodies. Words hold energy that stimulate our biology in various ways.

“What is the body made of? The ancient elements. The same minerals we find in clay, in sand and mud, the stuff of earth. We share limbs, arms, and trunks with the trees. The dendrites of nerve cells and the bronchiole of the lung are both named for their resemblance to the branches of trees that extend in finer and finer lines from the central trunk, the main axis. Can you sense that your own spine is like a tree trunk, a ladder connecting ground and sky, heaven and earth?

….or perhaps we are vertical rivers, walking watersheds, all our tissues supported by elaborate systems of irrigation and drainage. We are made of water and are thirsty for more. Water flows over the surface of the skin, the earth, across the land, on top of the land, inside the land, across the body, inside the body…

NATURAL PASSAGES CONSULTING

SERVICES OFFERED:

Coaching and Editing for Transformative and Visionary Writers

I help you reveal new possibilities in your creative work

Language is fundamental to who we are as biological beings and is the primary vehicle for taking action that produces effective results. It inherently carries within it our identity in the world and the potential for connection and collaboration.

As an advanced practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu I am able to see and work with the connection between the body’s energy system and that of language. Conversations actually live in our bodies. Words hold energy that stimulate our biology in various ways.

“What I wouldn’t give for 5 more minutes on the dance floor, while my legs were still strong enough to carry me”

There was a video posted here (and where the quote came from) that was a strong declaration, via older women’s wisdom, about the importance of “being” versus “doing”. Within a short period of time the video was not to be found anywhere and was not accessible. Perhaps it is my lack of competency in the technology of internet, but for whatever reason it is a loss not to have it posted here.

Instead, the quote above speaks for itself in a multitude of domains in our lives no matter what age we are. Not simply about “dancing” but how we live our lives.

This past week I experienced the death of a much older brother. Within the space that was created by his transition I realized once again that it is not death that is our “enemy”, but instead not fully living in the moments we are given and blessed with. By far the more serious potential regret.

Living life as fully expressed women as if every moment was your last – being open and present to what is unfolding without any “hold backs” – is by far the wiser choice for a testament to the fullness of your Being this time around….

Language is fundamental to who we are as biological beings and is the primary vehicle for taking action that produces effective results. It inherently carries within it our identity in the world and the potential for connection and collaboration.

As an advanced practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu I am able to see and work with the connection between the body’s energy system and that of language. Conversations actually live in our bodies. Words hold energy that stimulate our biology in various ways.

The first time I viewed this video I was most certainly taken by the beauty of the images and the prose. Even captivated by the woman’s voice that held the hint of being from some “exotic” place.

But what took me down into the deeper reaches of my soul as a woman was something that remained a little more challenging to articulate. Tears welled up every time I watched this and the “why?” somewhat escaped coming to form in language for awhile.

But then I felt it in my cells….an emergence of the feminine – in myself and all women across the globe – in a way and form that this sacred planet we live upon is ever whispering to each and every one of us no matter where we live or what situation and circumstances we find ourselves in.

And what made me weep was the knowing that we are not alone in this rising up. We never have to be alone as we mine the depths of who we are – our calling and purpose, our vision and creative outpourings – and through that congruent alignment automatically create a space for other women (and men) to move towards us and touch in for awhile….or a lifetime. To collaborate, inspire, hold and vision…..united in taking effective action from a space of Being.

I invite you to watch this video daily for 21 days and embody it’s message. Listen deeply to what is wanting to emerge from within…..and take a step directly into the heart of it and then out into your life and the world!

SERVICES OFFERED:

Coaching and Editing for Transformative and Visionary Writers

I help you reveal new possibilities in your creative work

Language is fundamental to who we are as biological beings and is the primary vehicle for taking action that produces effective results. It inherently carries within it our identity in the world and the potential for connection and collaboration.

As an advanced practitioner of Jin Shin Jyutsu I am able to see and work with the connection between the body’s energy system and that of language. Conversations actually live in our bodies. Words hold energy that stimulate our biology in various ways.